Most homeowners who have been installing residential solar panels over the past decade will be finding out that it was a more practical decision than they had thought. The power generated from these panels may have been more costly than the power coming from the local power company (mostly burning coal), but if the resident may choose to sell their homes, the price premium they will recieve for the solar system should allow for a regian of most of their original capital investment.
This is the conclusion that 3 researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have come to. Homes sold with and without photovoltaic (PV) systems in California over an 8 and a half year period were examined. The abstract of this study states, “the analysis finds strong evidence that California homes with PV systems have sold for a premium over comparable homes without PV systems.”
The price ranged from $3.90 and $6.40 per watt of capacity, averaging at %5.50 per watt. According to the study, this “corresponds to a home sales price premium of approximately $17,000 for a relatively new 3,100-watt PV system (the average size of PV systems in the study).”
“These average sales price premiums appear to be comparable to the investment that homeowners have made to install PV systems in California, which from 2001 through 2009 averaged approximately $5/watt.”
If these findings based in California might be extrapolated nationally, it would mean that the owners of 139,000 homes are able to collect a premium like this when the time comes to resell their homes. This gives the option against those who might argue that one must use their solar systems for many years before regaining what was the initial cost of the investment of installing solar panels.
One of the most notable points on this issue is that homeownder who have installed solar panels on their houses get nearly three times the premium of homeowners who had bought their house with solar panels previously installed. In attempts to explain this fact the study states “new home builders may also gain value from PV as a market differentiator, and have therefore often tended to sell PV as a standard (as opposed to an optional) product on their homes and perhaps been willing to accept a lower premium in return for faster sales velocity.”
For the past 5 years, installation of residential solar systems has been rising at an average of 51% per year over the last 5 years. This is according to Larry Sherwood, consultant to the Interstate Renewable Energy Council, a nonprofit group that helps various parties navigate the economic, legal, and technical aspects of renewable energy sources. Also, according to Sherwood, in 2010 the total capacity of such systems was 677 megawatts.
Spokesman for the Solar Energy Industries Association, Jared Blanton has reported that in 2010, the residential market was 30 percent of the national solar PV market, above the utility market (28 percent) but behind commercial installations (42 percent).
Over all, approximately 2,100 megawatts of grid-connected solar photovoltaic systems (residential and commercial) have been raised cross-country, and almost half of these being in California.
It is important to note that residential photovoltaic systems are taking place on a very small scale currently. Only one-tenth of a percent (.1%) of households have solar panel systems currently installed. Adding in commercial to residential photovoltaic systems and it rises to two-tenths of a percent(.2%) of renewable electricity in the country. Renewable electricity, in turn, makes up about 8% of the electricity used in America. This is all according to the federal Energy Information Administration.
